


Becoming the Gorgeous Man

by VictoriannWings



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Coming Out, Fire, Gen, M/M, Mustaches, Spectrum Zine, Trans Character, Trans Female Allura (Voltron), Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character, Trans Male Coran (Voltron), Trans female allura, Trans male Coran, Transitioning, letting go of the past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-30
Updated: 2017-11-30
Packaged: 2019-02-08 20:51:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12872760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VictoriannWings/pseuds/VictoriannWings
Summary: With a small smile, Coran straightened. "This is the first time I've felt like myself," he explained. He let his fingers uncoil, let them embrace his new words, let them roam free. But they always brought him back to Alfor, back to this man he had known for so long, longer than he'd known himself, and he touched the man's shoulder.Coran and Alfor create a tradition to say goodbye to your old selves, a funeral of sorts. Featured in the trans zine, Spectrum!





	Becoming the Gorgeous Man

  Coran nodded, his eyes brimming with tears, throat tight with emotion--but he wasn't sad. Maybe he was grieving, yes, but he wasn't sad. If anything, this was the first time he'd really, truly been happy.

 That's what he told Alfor, both of his hands on the man's face, as he explained himself. "I've loved you for so long, Alfor," he apologised. "But I'm not the woman you loved. I never have been. I'm a man." 

 The king shook his head, pushed Coran's hands away, but gently, as if afraid breaking this one moment of contact would break all others. That thought hit Coran like a blow to his chest, winding him, leaving him to stand with his hands holding the air left behind from Alfor's turned away face. His fingers closed on the emptiness. 

 With a small smile, Coran straightened. "This is the first time I've felt like myself," he explained. He let his fingers uncoil, let them embrace his new words, let them roam free. But they always brought him back to Alfor, back to this man he had known for so long, longer than he'd known himself, and he touched the man's shoulder. 

 Alfor turned to him then, but his tears were not of joy. His face was twisted up in his pain. That struck Coran even harder, because this incredible leader knew exactly when and how to hide his every emotion, knew how to remain impartial and diplomatic, but here he was, face damp and scowling and cracked open like a broken egg spilling out before him. 

 And then Alfor wrapped both of his arms around Coran, around the woman he'd loved for so long who wasn't a woman. He never had been. 

 "I've loved you, too," Alfor returned; the tears in his eyes turned to stars and Coran realised that his face reflected back at him finally belonged to himself. The subtle shift in the king's agony turned to a kind of understanding, the kind that strikes you to your soul and calms you down and comforts you all at once.

 "I've loved you, Coran," he murmured, and reach up to brush ginger hair behind pointed ears. "You make a gorgeous man."

  -

His only regret was that Alfor never got to see him with his 100% real, organically grown mustache gracing his upper lip. Coran had been sporting a fake one for so long that as soon as he'd been taking T long enough to grow his own--as soon as the little tiny baby orange hairs began to grow out, he'd cried. 

 It was worth it. It was worth letting the woman whose identity he'd been wearing for so long die. It was her time. She needed to be laid to rest. She wasn't Coran. She wasn't him. 

 And that kind of energy fueled him back then, arm and arm with Alfor. They took Coran's old wedding dress from the days when he had been the Queen and the Wife and Allura's Mother. They took it and they tore it apart, piece by piece, and burned it, in a little valley on Altea where more rocks stood guard over the flowers, where fire could be contained and goodbyes could be said. 

 Coran had worked so hard for this. To know himself, to accept himself. To grow and change and become the gorgeous man that Alfor loved. To love himself and love Alfor in return. The smoke rose in long columns, escaping the confines of the red flames licking the rocks. Tattered, ashy remains of a dress that would never be worn again nestled deep into the crevices of the boulders. Goodbye, woman that I used to be. Goodbye, woman that I never was.

 Coran had never been freer. He was the wind that blew the smoke away.

  -

 So when Allura came to him, twisting her hands together in fear, eyes downcast, and asked to tell him something, Coran pulled her near with an encouraging smile tucked behind a very real mustache and very real twinkling eyes. And she looked up at him through her lashes and said in the smallest of voices, "Coran, you've known me my whole life. And I wanted to tell you. I'm a girl." She swallowed, her eyes slightly too wide, too open, as if expecting him to be disappointed or sad or--Coran didn't know. 

 But his 100% real mustache upturned in a smile and he gathered her close in his muscled arms and buried one hand in her long, white hair. 

 "I know that," he murmured, eyes closed. "I thought I was somebody I'm not once, too. That's how I came to give birth to you, to carry you inside me, but I know now that I never was a woman. I'm quite a gorgeous man, in fact."

 Allura blinked up at him through crystalline damp lashes and smiled, laughed, almost choked on her own laughter, but wiped her face, and her whole body seemed to shine. Coran had never been happier to have a daughter. 

  -

 They held the ceremony on her birthday. Coran brought all of her favourite Altean flowers, purples and blues and whites, and Alfor brought her old baby clothes, the greens they dressed little Altean boys in, and the declaration of a prince's birth, and Allura brought her old clothes and the left-behind pieces of a broken heart learning to heal and to know itself, and the other Alteans gathered in the castle courtyard. 

 Everyone dressed in varying shades of black and gray, long overcoats and dresses and jackets and long sleeves. Everyone brought something that reminded them of the solitary Prince of Altea, Alfor's only son, and they built the pyre high. Pictures and poems and clothes and old toys and far too many things that had once been in Allura's possession but never belonged to her. The pile grew, and Allura stood, clutched her chest, felt the heart deep within her thud, felt it beat with the reality of grieving someone you never were. 

 Coran had felt the same way, arm in arm with his husband, King Alfor, burning a wedding dress that a different person had worn. 

 The fire rose higher than any other Coran had seen. The heat blazed for several feet apart, warmed Coran's real mustache, lit Allura's dark complexion with a rosy glow, and Coran thought she looked ethereal, incredible, beautiful, gorgeous, real. He'd never doubt that his daughter was anything but what she wanted to be. 

 The ashes rained down like burning snowflakes, fell thickly on their old selves, carpeting the world in a blankness that they couldn't help but be grateful for. A blank slate is a new beginning. A new beginning is a future you can build for yourself. Coran rested his hand on his daughter's shoulder, and Alfor did the same on her other side. 

 The courtyard full of people then began to shed their outer clothing. Black and gray fell to the ground in heaps of fabric, and they carried them forward, hurled them at the embers, which flared to life again, red and orange and alive. Underneath, the Alteans wore their brightest and best clothing--but, most importantly, they wore what best represented themselves and their identities. They stood, honest and true, bright and unapologetic, gorgeous in their own rights, and smiled at each other, smiled at Allura, who would one day be their queen. 

 "Tonight, the prince is dead. Here forward, we only have a princess," King Alfor addressed the whole court, but he only had eyes for Allura. She turned to look up at him and Coran had never loved two people more. 


End file.
